Stopped at an intersection on Lynnwood Road. A poor boy, in small shorts, his limbs too skinny, his face too thin. He could be fourteen, but he looks so small that he seems ten. He holds a piece of cardboard with illiterate, black marker scrawlings. Something about food and a job. It’s always about a job. But the need for food is apparent. There was plenty of spare change in the car, but others were around. Others who were bigger, more well fed. So I waited for the light to change and drove away, tears streaming underneath large, dark sunglasses. If I had given him money it would probably have gone to some Fagin who takes it while starving him. If I gave him food he would have been beaten for returning without money. We have such high and noble notions when listening to songs about how we are all Africans, we are all prisoners, locked behind shatterproof glass in the alarmed metal bubble.